A virologist who reportedly sought to “bully” that hypothesis away after funding the Wuhan lab at the core of COVID leak allegations has publicly posted videos of himself working with bats inside a cave for his study.
Dr. Peter Daszak shared a video on Twitter last week that was shot from the depths of Thailand’s Ratchaburi Cave.
The 2.5 million of the critters Daszak, an Englishman who now resides in upstate New York, believes COVID-19 originated from, were all around him. The cave was dubbed the “reactor center” of viral activity by the speaker.
The scientist became embroiled in controversy when it emerged in a Vanity Fair exposé that his organization, EcoHealth Alliance, had funded the gain-of-function study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is generally thought to have generated and carelessly released SARS-CoV-2.
Gain of function research aims to develop possible pandemic therapies by modifying viruses to make them more effective.
Despite Daszak’s affiliation with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the National Institutes of Health granted EcoHealth Alliance a $653,392 grant in September to research Covid-like viruses in bats across Asia and Africa.
This week, Daszak shared footage of himself and other researchers surrounded by swarms of bats and even feeding the bats by hand in a series of tweets.
He captioned a video of a column of bats coming out of a tunnel, “In the center of the bat cave – deafening noise as the bats whirl about,” with the words, “In the Bat Cave.”
Given what we know about viral emergence, it seems to be the colony’s “reactor core” while also being the utmost in natural beauty.
In other tweets, researchers could be seen feeding and manipulating bats, hand-releasing them into the air, and working while surrounded by clouds of bats.
In every video, the researchers were seen in close contact to several species while wearing complete protective gear, including body suits, gloves, goggles, and face masks.
However, several people found it unbelievable that Daszak’s company was chosen to do that study.
Giving government funds to EcoHealth for pandemic research is like to paying an alleged arsonist to check fire safety measures.
Republican senator from Iowa Joni Ernst told DailyMail.com.
Since 2002, EcoHealth Alliance has received financing from the federal government, including a grant from Anthony Fauci via the NIH for gain-of-function viral research that it carried out in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
According to Dr. Andrew Huff, a former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, the study may have produced the coronavirus strain that started the epidemic.
Gain-of-function research accelerates viruses to more readily infect people in order to test scientific hypotheses, create new technologies, and discover cures for infectious illnesses.
The dangerous research technique may raise issues with safety and security and is outlawed in many nations.
According to Huff, who worked with the Wuhan lab, the virus had been created in the lab into a far more potent pathogen and would never arise in nature.
During his time working there, he said, “EcoHealth Alliance produced SARS-CoV-2 and was responsible for the creation of the agent SARS-CoV-2.”
However, Daszak has combated COVID-19 lab leak hypotheses with such vigor that he has been charged with “thuggery.”
In February 2020, at the very beginning of the Pandemic, Daszak persuaded more than two dozen additional scientists to ratify a letter he had written to the esteemed medical journal The Lancet. The letter vehemently denounced “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
In the early days of inquiry regarding the virus, those who thought there was a potential the virus may have escaped from the WIV were mainly dismissed as fringe ideas because of Daszak’s letter.
The Lancet letter, however, was described as “scientific propaganda” and “a kind of thuggery and intimidation” by Jamie Metzl, a former senior official in the Clinton administration who has served on the World Health Organization’s advisory council on human genome editing.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent Daszak 34 inquiries concerning his role with the Wuhan lab in April 2021.
Daszak was given until the following month to react, but at the time, a source close to the committee informed DailyMail.com that neither he nor EcoHealth Alliance had responded.
“Complete quiet. The insider said that they’seem to be refusing to recognize anything from us. We at least get a “we received your letter, we are working on it” response when we write to a government agency. however from Eco? Zip.
“We want them to help us and provide us with the information we need.” We’re not making a special effort to attempt to burn them. On some of these issues, we just want answers. They are the organization associated with the WIV and would be able to provide many of the answers, which should be helpful. However, they reject any involvement in such.
Whether Daszak ever answered to such inquiries is still unknown, but since then, he has been the target of requests for more inquiries.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican leader of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, expressed indignation that the organization got more government funds this year as late as October of this year.
“Until EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak are entirely honest, they should not get a single penny in government money.” Period. This is crazy, she said.
And in April, Rodgers and the House Energy and Commerce Committee ordered the NIH to look into Daszak and EcoHealth on the grounds that they could have omitted crucial information when reapplying for funding, which could be considered fraud in the committee’s eyes.
»Virologist who sponsored Wuhan lab releases bat footage«